inky fingers: A blog

Last weekend I started a linocut series, ironically titled The Rayguns of History. At first, it was going to be a series of four, then went to 6. I am stopping, at least for now, at nine. My fear is that they are going to start looking all alike. The blocks measure 5 x 4 inches. My plan is to make them available individually, framed or unframed, or as a set, all in one frame.

Why rayguns, do you ask?

I grew up, like many my age, watching old science fiction movies and television. The St. Louis TV station KPLR broadcast several episodes of the Flash Gordon serial every Saturday morning. Other stations from the same area had Sci Fi Cinema and Creature Feature. This was long before cable television, we lived about 60 miles from St Louis, and if the weather wasn't just right, the station didn't come in. Of course, there was also Star Trek, Lost in Space, The Time Tunnel and The Invaders. A sci-fi kid in the 1960's had a lot of choices!

One of the first sci-fi movies I remember seeing on TV was George Pal's War of the Worlds. It's still one of my all-time favorites. So, although I have never read much science fiction, I certainly watched a lot of it on TV. Rockets, rayguns, and flying saucers were part of my childhood.

I will be posting more during the process, ending with posting the final prints. I will have them available in my Shop.

And here's another time-lapse video, making the preliminary cuts on the third to last lino of the series.